Who is Simon Wessely?
Gosh that's bad. The art of waffling, talking rubbish, making stuff up, slotting in a jokey anecdote...
Is this man for real?
neurophusion
Established Member (Voting Rights)
He does not want to go into post COVID but does so almost straight away, with the same speculations as usual but in a more general or informal manner, 1:19:20 to 1:21:10 of the full video.
Bonus points: He mentions how smart (arse) he was in his youth.
Bonus points: He mentions how smart (arse) he was in his youth.
Chandelier
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Here are the auto-generated subtitles for that time range:
>> It's a question about the rise postcovid.
Could there be some sort of postsviral
phenomena?
That might be the end.
>> Yeah. Um I don't know. I don't want to
get into kind of postcovid and things
like that, but what there could well be
and it's it's a hypothesis. It's not
proven, but um it's quite an attractive
idea is that what the because the COVID
shot it is you can see those graphs and
you could see that that was COVID. Well,
I mean it could have been a complete
coincidence, but hard to believe that it
was. It's not happening elsewhere.
where you have a disorder, very genetic
disorders with traits. So, everyone has
traits and some people have more than
others, but I mean I was very bookish
when I was a kid to work in a bookshop
and then I got fired and someone came in
and said, "Where where are the self-help
books?" And I said, "Well, if I told you
that um it would be defeating the object
and I got I got fired for being too
smart." That's true. But I was a very
bookish kid, you know, but there we are.
It was quite helpful to me. But in then
the COVID shock comes and it just pushes
people who are you know got quite
prominent traits and then they cross
this kind of dividing line into
disorder. Um and that's quite an
attractive hypothesis. It is just a
hypothesis. It's very difficult to prove
but against that if that were the case
you would expect them to be pushed it
you know from borderline to mild. They
wouldn't suddenly jump to the kind of
the the severe extremes. And at the
moment we're not really seeing that. So,
I don't know if that's the truth or not,
but it's quite an attractive idea. And
and then obviously as as the CO recedes,
they'll they'll slip back and go below
the line again. But these lines are
entirely arbitrary. They're not
biological. They're not even
statistical. They're just arbitrary. And
assessing um impairment is, you know,
it's more an art than a science.
So, you know, it's not surprising that
we get into trouble on the margins.
Could there be some sort of postsviral
phenomena?
That might be the end.
>> Yeah. Um I don't know. I don't want to
get into kind of postcovid and things
like that, but what there could well be
and it's it's a hypothesis. It's not
proven, but um it's quite an attractive
idea is that what the because the COVID
shot it is you can see those graphs and
you could see that that was COVID. Well,
I mean it could have been a complete
coincidence, but hard to believe that it
was. It's not happening elsewhere.
where you have a disorder, very genetic
disorders with traits. So, everyone has
traits and some people have more than
others, but I mean I was very bookish
when I was a kid to work in a bookshop
and then I got fired and someone came in
and said, "Where where are the self-help
books?" And I said, "Well, if I told you
that um it would be defeating the object
and I got I got fired for being too
smart." That's true. But I was a very
bookish kid, you know, but there we are.
It was quite helpful to me. But in then
the COVID shock comes and it just pushes
people who are you know got quite
prominent traits and then they cross
this kind of dividing line into
disorder. Um and that's quite an
attractive hypothesis. It is just a
hypothesis. It's very difficult to prove
but against that if that were the case
you would expect them to be pushed it
you know from borderline to mild. They
wouldn't suddenly jump to the kind of
the the severe extremes. And at the
moment we're not really seeing that. So,
I don't know if that's the truth or not,
but it's quite an attractive idea. And
and then obviously as as the CO recedes,
they'll they'll slip back and go below
the line again. But these lines are
entirely arbitrary. They're not
biological. They're not even
statistical. They're just arbitrary. And
assessing um impairment is, you know,
it's more an art than a science.
So, you know, it's not surprising that
we get into trouble on the margins.
Lovely anectode: Sir Simon Wessely has been fired as a kid from a job in a bookshop.
He's just too smart, you know.
NelliePledge
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
The bookshop probably didn’t want to have to widen the doors to fit his superior head 
Concentric_Spiral
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
He sounds woefully inarticulate. Reminds me of Trump.
Adam pwme
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
SIRPA Conference - Paul Garner
In May 2025, an Association of practitioners of mind-body medicine, SIRPA, invited me to talk about my post-covid-19 condition and controversies in the field. The video is available here.
paulgarner.co.uk
31.50 mentions Wessely
It’s the same with skills, isn’t it? A title like ‘Sir’ is a bit arbitrary, as is his job and his salary. I quite like it when their own logic undermines them all at once, and they don’t even realise it.
Wow that's a truly awful word salad. So much worse in that he was technically talking about his own topic of expertise, on which he built his career, and he sounds like a word salad generator that got stuck. To me it clearly shows that he knows he screwed up but doesn't have the integrity to admit it, and this is how it comes out. He knows he contributed to a monstrous failure, but he's content in the luxurious life it gave him.
That's how you know he's an expert, when at the height of relevance (which is sad) of what he worked on for at least two decades, became a world-renowned expert on the topic, he can barely string together a sentence coherent enough to sound like a book report from a 10 year-old who didn't even read the book and is just running out the clock. Can't even say a single coherent thing about it.
He deserves a lot of contempt, and consequences, but damn do the people who listen to this rambling nonsense and think it's smart to make decisions about millions of lives based on it deserve public punishment, involving medieval wood stocks and rotten fruits and vegetables. This ideology is a true monument to mediocrity and what complete lack of integrity look like.
That's how you know he's an expert, when at the height of relevance (which is sad) of what he worked on for at least two decades, became a world-renowned expert on the topic, he can barely string together a sentence coherent enough to sound like a book report from a 10 year-old who didn't even read the book and is just running out the clock. Can't even say a single coherent thing about it.
He deserves a lot of contempt, and consequences, but damn do the people who listen to this rambling nonsense and think it's smart to make decisions about millions of lives based on it deserve public punishment, involving medieval wood stocks and rotten fruits and vegetables. This ideology is a true monument to mediocrity and what complete lack of integrity look like.
MrMagoo
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Oh I “heard” a totally different anecdote than you did.
I read that and thought “what a rude insensitive little runt, someone wants self-help books so they’re probably struggling, they ask the assistant where they are and he is so lacking in human empathy he instead makes a smart quip, at the persons’ expense!
No wonder they fired him. Imagine though, years later being so lacking in personal development that you relate that story to other people, unprompted and for no clear reason”.
And him a psychiatrist. I look forward with delight to my “cease and desist” letter. I shan’t. I’m allowed an opinion.
Last edited:
alktipping
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Vested financial interest he is there to muddy the waters a straw man to provide excuses for the insurance industry and sociopaths in government . simply to deny rights or funding to large numbers of sick and disabled . human being seem to lap up attacks on minorities without understanding that this could become their fate .
neurophusion
Established Member (Voting Rights)
I strongly suspect the reason he was given so much deference and status is because of a combination of networking/self-promotion, telling people in power what they want to hear, cozying up to the British Army, and reflecting the pre-existing structure and beliefs of the status quo.
He clearly has always liked media attention and literally co-founded the Science Media Centre. He advised the government in a manner which would be agreeable to them to minimise welfare payments. He provided the military with an excuse to downplay the lingering physical effects on Gulf War veterans.
@Sean mentioned earlier that Wessely gives off a vibe of high confidence. The BBC article I posted earlier lists this and cultural matching as one of the main reasons why people fail upwards despite relative mediocrity. He traveled in circles of like-minded colleagues and other influential figures.
Sometimes people just get lucky too. The fact he rose to the top is also a reflection of the state of medicine/psychiatry and its crisis of validity. He apparently loves the grey area of medicine.
He clearly has always liked media attention and literally co-founded the Science Media Centre. He advised the government in a manner which would be agreeable to them to minimise welfare payments. He provided the military with an excuse to downplay the lingering physical effects on Gulf War veterans.
@Sean mentioned earlier that Wessely gives off a vibe of high confidence. The BBC article I posted earlier lists this and cultural matching as one of the main reasons why people fail upwards despite relative mediocrity. He traveled in circles of like-minded colleagues and other influential figures.
Sometimes people just get lucky too. The fact he rose to the top is also a reflection of the state of medicine/psychiatry and its crisis of validity. He apparently loves the grey area of medicine.
Last edited by a moderator:
True. He, and his like-minded colleagues, are providing the political and financial elites, and broader society, the pseudo-scientific, pseudo-medical, pseudo-compassionate excuses for their shitty policies and mistreatment of people like us.
Never any lack of unprincipled people in this world who will happily and brazenly sell out their professional obligations and ethics for power, income, and glory. And, of course, protection from accountability for it. They rarely pay an appropriate price for it, at least in their lifetimes. They might suffer some historical reckoning, but that is cold comfort to those of us on the receiving end of while they still rule over us.
IIRC, there is a puff piece on Wessely a couple of decades back in one the UK medical journals in which he said or implied something to the effect that he is not fond of dealing with the physical side of human suffering. Doesn't like the sight of blood, kind of thing, and that is a big part of why he chose mental health for his career.
Which might have revealed more than he intended.
Which might have revealed more than he intended.
Chandelier
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
You sent me down a rabbit hole.
I couldn't find the blood part but ...
... he does seem to be a particularly arrogant type of person.
I came across a YouTube video titled A Career in Psychiatry by the NHSMedicalCareers channel.
I thought the subtitles are worth archiving. I put them in a spoiler to facilitate quoting.
[Reporter]: I'm with Simon Wesley, Professor of Psychological Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College.
[Reporter]: Simon, tell us a little bit about yourself and what led you to psychiatry.
[Wessely]: Well, I was doing medicine because I wanted to be a doctor, although I can't quite remember why that was now, but I did.
[Wessely]: And I was enjoying it.
[Wessely]: But as I was going through the medical curriculum and courses, I went first to Cambridge and then I integrated an art degree, then I went on to Oxford.
[Wessely]: I was more and more interested in some of the wider issues. It wasn't just about putting up drips, doing cardiac arrests and learning the practical side of medicine, although that was crucial.
[Wessely]: But I found myself more and more being drawn to some of the wider issues and things that we were talking about and the more complicated parts of medicine.
[Wessely]: And more and more into psychiatry that seemed to take a broader view of people than just seeing it as a collection of cells or a collection of organs.
[Wessely]: Psychiatry did see people like that, but also it was the main discipline that saw people actually as people as well. And I found that fascinating.
[Reporter]: So who makes a really good psychiatrist?
[Wessely]: Well, psychiatrists, I think there's for certain things that they're not. They're not normally quite as decisive action figures, superheroes, like our surgeons like to think of themselves.
[Wessely]: We are a little bit more patient, a little bit more reflective. But I think most of all, we are more curious about people, how they are, how they think and what they do.
[Wessely]: What is the things that make them tick? And we are fundamentally those who see people as more than the sum of their parts.
[Reporter]: Do you think psychiatry has got an image problem?
[Wessely]: We do have an image problem. It would be ridiculous to say we don't. I mean, within the trade, I think it's the most exciting part of medicine and it's on the cutting edge of modern neuroscience.
[Wessely]: But outside, we're either seen as Hannibal Lecter or Sigmund Freud or a whole series of stereotypes. And the truth is also just as our patients are stigmatized, so sometimes the psychiatrist. And I'm afraid that is a problem that we just have to live with.
[Reporter]: But as a consultant, what are the developments and hot topics in your area that are keeping your interest?
[Wessely]: I mean, there's just so much going on. I mean, psychiatry is a bit like neurology was a hundred years ago. We're just starting to understand some of the neural basis of behaviour, thought and cognition and how that's been translated into diseases such as schizophrenia and autism.
[Wessely]: Just last week, there was a huge new finding in the understanding of the brain behaviour of autism, which is really fascinating. On the other hand, there's also issues about the impact of psychiatric disorder on physical health and vice versa that I find enthralling.
[Wessely]: And then we have the kind of broader ethical issues.
[Wessely]: Yesterday, we were involved in a huge debate on suicide and euthanasia. These are really hot topics being debated across society and they're fundamentally about psychiatry and mental health.
[Reporter]: It sounds a fascinating area, but do you have a problem actually getting enough people?
[Wessely]: We're not the most popular specialty. We know that. A lot of people go into medicine either because they really want to do surgery and the highly active stuff, or let's be honest, they want to make a lot of money.
[Wessely]: We're not going to be.
[Wessely]: We do tend to attract the people who are more widely read, who are more thoughtful,
[Wessely]: I think also are more empathic and more able to get on with people and understand people. And I'd like to say that's every single medical student.
[Wessely]: The truth is it isn't.
[Wessely]: We tend to get the people who are more patient and can actually have a genuine curiosity in people and their lives. So you do have a skill shortage.
[Reporter]: What makes psychiatry a particularly good
career?
[Reporter]: What sort of opportunities are there that you could sell this career through?
[Wessely]: I mean, first of all, there's the intellectual fascination of what we do. And, you know, whatever else you do in psychiatry, you're not going to get bored because we deal with so many aspects of life.
[Wessely]: And then within psychiatry, psychiatry is a huge discipline.
[Wessely]: And there's an enormous difference between my colleagues here who are doing neuroimaging and neurosciences as psychiatrists, my colleagues who do forensic psychiatry and look at the problems of the law and behaviour and criminality, those who do child psychiatry, work with children, those who do family therapy, those who do psychotherapy and talk to people and understand their emotions and development.
[Wessely]: And myself, I work in a general hospital. My background is in general medicine and I work alongside our physicians and our accident and emergency specialists to look at the kind of psychiatric problems and physical illness.
[Wessely]: The whole of human life is within that
word psychiatry.
[Wessely]: Just saying you're doing psychiatry, you could be doing a huge variety of things, all of which are very different. Very flexible in its subject area.
[Reporter]: What about the flexibility in the training approach?
[Wessely]: I think we are a more mature discipline. We are flexible in our training approaches. First of all, we like people to have done other things. We're very keen that people have had wider experiences across medicine. We want them to have fundamentally got a grasp of their fundamental medical skills.
[Wessely]: Absolutely, totally part of medicine. And therefore we want you to be a good doctor and confident in your medical skills. And then if you've done other things, maybe in neuroscience and basic sciences, or maybe working in very complicated, difficult situations as well, or maybe in acute medicine and A&E, we welcome all those opportunities.
[Wessely]: We're not in a hurry for you to come and join us. And the second thing is, psychiatry, its training demands are probably less than those of some of the other craft specialities. We're very open to part-time working.
[Wessely]: People do can have career breaks and come back in a way that's harder in some of the upfront specialties like Obst & Gynae or with surgery.
[Wessely]: So we can do that.
[Wessely]: I think we're probably closest to general practice in the way in which people can develop and structure their careers.
[Wessely]: But finally though, at the end, we're going to want to have a highly trained, highly competent consultant work body who are able to do the same missions of clinical work, teaching and research as all our colleagues in every other speciality.
[Wessely]: We're no different in the standards that we have.
[Reporter]: Do you have any advice you'd offer someone who is just starting out and thinking about a career in psychiatry?
[Wessely]: Well, I think the first thing is to see what it's like and put your toe in the water and see what it's like.
[Wessely]: Not to be put off by some of the Hannibal Lecter stereotypes that are around, which are actually quite humorous and real life isn't like that.
[Wessely]: And also take your time.
[Wessely]: You've got time.
[Wessely]: This is a decision you don't have to make immediately.
[Wessely]: Get a broad range of experiences that are going to help you.
[Wessely]: Read widely and that's in my speciality probably more than anyone else.
[Wessely]: To have a very good, broad cultural knowledge of how people are from history, from literature and from many other aspects of culture is actually going to be more important to us than it probably is in any other bit of medicine.
[Wessely]: So don't just read art textbooks, you know, read some great novels, read some bits of history, read other things as well.
[Wessely]: We'd like to see well-rounded people who can understand what is it that makes people tick.
[Reporter]: Professor Wesley, thank you for your time.
[Wessely]: Thank you.
[Reporter]: Simon, tell us a little bit about yourself and what led you to psychiatry.
[Wessely]: Well, I was doing medicine because I wanted to be a doctor, although I can't quite remember why that was now, but I did.
[Wessely]: And I was enjoying it.
[Wessely]: But as I was going through the medical curriculum and courses, I went first to Cambridge and then I integrated an art degree, then I went on to Oxford.
[Wessely]: I was more and more interested in some of the wider issues. It wasn't just about putting up drips, doing cardiac arrests and learning the practical side of medicine, although that was crucial.
[Wessely]: But I found myself more and more being drawn to some of the wider issues and things that we were talking about and the more complicated parts of medicine.
[Wessely]: And more and more into psychiatry that seemed to take a broader view of people than just seeing it as a collection of cells or a collection of organs.
[Wessely]: Psychiatry did see people like that, but also it was the main discipline that saw people actually as people as well. And I found that fascinating.
[Reporter]: So who makes a really good psychiatrist?
[Wessely]: Well, psychiatrists, I think there's for certain things that they're not. They're not normally quite as decisive action figures, superheroes, like our surgeons like to think of themselves.
[Wessely]: We are a little bit more patient, a little bit more reflective. But I think most of all, we are more curious about people, how they are, how they think and what they do.
[Wessely]: What is the things that make them tick? And we are fundamentally those who see people as more than the sum of their parts.
[Reporter]: Do you think psychiatry has got an image problem?
[Wessely]: We do have an image problem. It would be ridiculous to say we don't. I mean, within the trade, I think it's the most exciting part of medicine and it's on the cutting edge of modern neuroscience.
[Wessely]: But outside, we're either seen as Hannibal Lecter or Sigmund Freud or a whole series of stereotypes. And the truth is also just as our patients are stigmatized, so sometimes the psychiatrist. And I'm afraid that is a problem that we just have to live with.
[Reporter]: But as a consultant, what are the developments and hot topics in your area that are keeping your interest?
[Wessely]: I mean, there's just so much going on. I mean, psychiatry is a bit like neurology was a hundred years ago. We're just starting to understand some of the neural basis of behaviour, thought and cognition and how that's been translated into diseases such as schizophrenia and autism.
[Wessely]: Just last week, there was a huge new finding in the understanding of the brain behaviour of autism, which is really fascinating. On the other hand, there's also issues about the impact of psychiatric disorder on physical health and vice versa that I find enthralling.
[Wessely]: And then we have the kind of broader ethical issues.
[Wessely]: Yesterday, we were involved in a huge debate on suicide and euthanasia. These are really hot topics being debated across society and they're fundamentally about psychiatry and mental health.
[Reporter]: It sounds a fascinating area, but do you have a problem actually getting enough people?
[Wessely]: We're not the most popular specialty. We know that. A lot of people go into medicine either because they really want to do surgery and the highly active stuff, or let's be honest, they want to make a lot of money.
[Wessely]: We're not going to be.
[Wessely]: We do tend to attract the people who are more widely read, who are more thoughtful,
[Wessely]: I think also are more empathic and more able to get on with people and understand people. And I'd like to say that's every single medical student.
[Wessely]: The truth is it isn't.
[Wessely]: We tend to get the people who are more patient and can actually have a genuine curiosity in people and their lives. So you do have a skill shortage.
[Reporter]: What makes psychiatry a particularly good
career?
[Reporter]: What sort of opportunities are there that you could sell this career through?
[Wessely]: I mean, first of all, there's the intellectual fascination of what we do. And, you know, whatever else you do in psychiatry, you're not going to get bored because we deal with so many aspects of life.
[Wessely]: And then within psychiatry, psychiatry is a huge discipline.
[Wessely]: And there's an enormous difference between my colleagues here who are doing neuroimaging and neurosciences as psychiatrists, my colleagues who do forensic psychiatry and look at the problems of the law and behaviour and criminality, those who do child psychiatry, work with children, those who do family therapy, those who do psychotherapy and talk to people and understand their emotions and development.
[Wessely]: And myself, I work in a general hospital. My background is in general medicine and I work alongside our physicians and our accident and emergency specialists to look at the kind of psychiatric problems and physical illness.
[Wessely]: The whole of human life is within that
word psychiatry.
[Wessely]: Just saying you're doing psychiatry, you could be doing a huge variety of things, all of which are very different. Very flexible in its subject area.
[Reporter]: What about the flexibility in the training approach?
[Wessely]: I think we are a more mature discipline. We are flexible in our training approaches. First of all, we like people to have done other things. We're very keen that people have had wider experiences across medicine. We want them to have fundamentally got a grasp of their fundamental medical skills.
[Wessely]: Absolutely, totally part of medicine. And therefore we want you to be a good doctor and confident in your medical skills. And then if you've done other things, maybe in neuroscience and basic sciences, or maybe working in very complicated, difficult situations as well, or maybe in acute medicine and A&E, we welcome all those opportunities.
[Wessely]: We're not in a hurry for you to come and join us. And the second thing is, psychiatry, its training demands are probably less than those of some of the other craft specialities. We're very open to part-time working.
[Wessely]: People do can have career breaks and come back in a way that's harder in some of the upfront specialties like Obst & Gynae or with surgery.
[Wessely]: So we can do that.
[Wessely]: I think we're probably closest to general practice in the way in which people can develop and structure their careers.
[Wessely]: But finally though, at the end, we're going to want to have a highly trained, highly competent consultant work body who are able to do the same missions of clinical work, teaching and research as all our colleagues in every other speciality.
[Wessely]: We're no different in the standards that we have.
[Reporter]: Do you have any advice you'd offer someone who is just starting out and thinking about a career in psychiatry?
[Wessely]: Well, I think the first thing is to see what it's like and put your toe in the water and see what it's like.
[Wessely]: Not to be put off by some of the Hannibal Lecter stereotypes that are around, which are actually quite humorous and real life isn't like that.
[Wessely]: And also take your time.
[Wessely]: You've got time.
[Wessely]: This is a decision you don't have to make immediately.
[Wessely]: Get a broad range of experiences that are going to help you.
[Wessely]: Read widely and that's in my speciality probably more than anyone else.
[Wessely]: To have a very good, broad cultural knowledge of how people are from history, from literature and from many other aspects of culture is actually going to be more important to us than it probably is in any other bit of medicine.
[Wessely]: So don't just read art textbooks, you know, read some great novels, read some bits of history, read other things as well.
[Wessely]: We'd like to see well-rounded people who can understand what is it that makes people tick.
[Reporter]: Professor Wesley, thank you for your time.
[Wessely]: Thank you.
There's also an e-Interview on cambridge.org in which, I think, he tries to be funny.
Note his emphasis on his own career when asked about the most admirable living or dead psychiatrists:
Peter T
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
If his greatest achievement is as unreliable and as harmful as his “Helping to show that chronic fatigue syndrome can be treated” I dread to think what his lesser achievements have resulted in.
Though I guess anything can be treated as long as you have no concern about whether that treatment is helpful or not.
Though I guess anything can be treated as long as you have no concern about whether that treatment is helpful or not.
His greatest achievement is getting his name on several hundred papers, and maximising the benefits to himself from it, while delivering so little actual benefit to the rest of the world, and very successfully shifting the blame for it all onto his victims and critics, who were right about him and his work all along.
Should have stuck to art history, Sir Simon. They like opinionated show ponies, and there is almost zero chance of doing serious harm to the world, or being held to account for it.
Should have stuck to art history, Sir Simon. They like opinionated show ponies, and there is almost zero chance of doing serious harm to the world, or being held to account for it.
NHS England shuts down in the first part of next year. For the record here is his resume as it appears for his role as Board adviser on mental health.
.
Board adviser – mental health
Professor Sir Simon Wessely FMedSci FRS
Simon is the Interim Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, where he is also the UK’s only Regius Chair of Psychiatry. Since 1991 he has been a Consultant Psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts.
After medical training at Oxford he obtained the MRCP in Newcastle, before moving to London to train in psychiatry at the Maudsley. He is an active clinical academic psychiatrist and was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2021. He is a Past President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2013 to 2017) and the Royal Society of Medicine (2017 to 2020).
After a Master’s and Doctorate in epidemiology, he founded the King’s Centre for Military Health Research. He remains the Honorary Consultant Advisor in Psychiatry to the British Army and works with several charities for Veterans. Sir Simon chaired the government’s Independent Review of the Mental Health Act between 2017 and 2019. He was the Director of the PHE NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Emergency Preparedness and Response, which was very active during the COVID-19 pandemic, and continues to have a broad interest in how people and populations react to adversity and occupational health and wellbeing.
Simon was a non-executive director on NHS England’s Board from 27 January 2023 to 31 July 2025.
Board adviser – mental health
Professor Sir Simon Wessely FMedSci FRS
Simon is the Interim Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, where he is also the UK’s only Regius Chair of Psychiatry. Since 1991 he has been a Consultant Psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts.
After medical training at Oxford he obtained the MRCP in Newcastle, before moving to London to train in psychiatry at the Maudsley. He is an active clinical academic psychiatrist and was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2021. He is a Past President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2013 to 2017) and the Royal Society of Medicine (2017 to 2020).
After a Master’s and Doctorate in epidemiology, he founded the King’s Centre for Military Health Research. He remains the Honorary Consultant Advisor in Psychiatry to the British Army and works with several charities for Veterans. Sir Simon chaired the government’s Independent Review of the Mental Health Act between 2017 and 2019. He was the Director of the PHE NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Emergency Preparedness and Response, which was very active during the COVID-19 pandemic, and continues to have a broad interest in how people and populations react to adversity and occupational health and wellbeing.
Simon was a non-executive director on NHS England’s Board from 27 January 2023 to 31 July 2025.